Lexicographizing as a Method of Describing Vocabulary: Revisiting the Theoretical Legacy of Olga Blinova

Abstract

The article develops the idea formulated by Olga Iosifovna Blinova, professor of Tomsk State University, according to which lexicography is one of the methods of studying vocabulary. The material of the study included: (1) theoretical works by Olga Blinova, (2) her lexicographic works, (3) lexicographic experiments of the author of the article and their theoretical understanding, (4) works of other authors on related issues. The main research method used in the article is a comparison of concepts and principles of their implementation in different authors to identify the features of Blinova’s lexicographic theory and practice. The author interprets lexicographizing of a word as a specific approach to the description of its semantics, as a way of its modeling, which consists in its discretization – transformation of continuous semantic space of the language into notional quanta, clots of meaning. In the study, this method is contrasted with other methods of language modeling found in applied language descriptions: in the methods of language teaching, in translation and in compilation of computer programs on a linguistic basis in particular. Much attention is paid to the concept of lexical parameterization, which occurs in the process of lexicographic modeling of the semantic reality of the language. The most important principle of semantics modeling is the parameterization of the meaning of a word and vocabulary in general. The article discusses the features of parameterization in explanatory dictionaries against the background of their opposition to other types of dictionaries: encyclopedic, motivational dictionaries, dictionaries of everyday interpretations of words and frequency dictionaries. To identify these features, the definitions of words in explanatory and encyclopedic dictionaries are analyzed. Such important trends in modern lexicography as overcoming the absolutization of the discreteness of semantics and its simplified definition are analyzed. The article explores the tendency of lexicography to an antropocentric modeling of semantics in dictionaries, a particular manifestation of which is the representation of the content of a word as a conceptual content. In more detail, the article highlights the specifics of the motivational dictionary – one of the main lexicographic works by Blinova, who developed the concept of this type of dictionary and implemented it in practice by creating the Motivational Dialect Dictionary. The final section of the article analyzes Blinova’s idea about the possibility of implementing a project of a complex dictionary, in which the meaning of each word is considered in the mirror of a set of parameters which together give a systematic idea of the functioning, semantics and linguistic connections of the word. The article draws conclusions about the role of Blinova’s theoretical heritage for semasiology, dialectology and lexicography of the Russian language.